


Above | Beneath

by Vixx2pointOh



Series: Felicity has a Cracking Good Time [2]
Category: Aquaman (2018), Aquaman (Comics), Arrow (TV 2012)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Soulmates, Aqualicity, Aquaman is Jason Momoa, Crack Crossover, Crack Relationships, Eventual Smut, Eye Sex, F/M, Porn with Feelings, Sexual Tension
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-17
Updated: 2018-08-23
Packaged: 2019-06-28 12:42:43
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 14,001
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15707451
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Vixx2pointOh/pseuds/Vixx2pointOh
Summary: He was from the lost world beneath.She was from the dry land above.Or at least that's what they thought...





	1. 《Deep》

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Evansgirl](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Evansgirl/gifts).



 

**Authors Note:**

_Helloooo, so this is new and exciting…_  
_I dedicate this cracked ship to Bish, I hope you like it. Thanks for being ying to my yang, for picking my side even when I didn’t ask you to, for adopting me as your sister, giving me a place to vent, making me laugh obnoxiously loud in public places and for never judging me for the things that sometimes come out of my mouth._

_I’m glad to have found you._

_Now onto some notes:_  
_Firstly, this is a universe where their significant others don’t exist. Like at all. Just not there. Too bad, so sad. Secondly, there are at least 3 different origin stories to Aquaman, and they literally contradict each other, because comics, y’all. So I have taken liberties with this one and leaned a little more towards the one I am familiar with (he is the child of Queen Atlanna and a lighthouse keeper, Tom Curry) I’ve borrowed from the origins where he also has a half-brother Orm. I’ve also borrowed from what we know of him from the DC adaption in Justice League and definitely made some shit up too, okay? Cool, cool._

_Re Atlantis, I’ve taken a few liberties here as well and gone the more mythical route, with the dome and the gods and cool stuff like that, and again, made some shit up too, because I’m not paid by DC to write continuality (are they even?!)_

_Thirdly, if you’ve managed to find your way here because you ship this too, welcome._  
_This is a safe space._

_This is a three part story that is fully written and will be posted today (obviously because you’re here) Monday and Thursday next week._

_It’s rated E because it’s me. Ordinarily I would wait before upping the rating to suit, but seeing as I’ve already written it and I’m updating over 1 week, I’ve rated it now._

**-|-**

She dipped her toe into the cool water of the Aegean Ocean that lapped against the rocky shore line along a remote stretch of Turkey that was home to a small fishing town that seemed frozen in time. The chill was immediate and sent a biting shiver up her spine that made Felicity silently gasp and a column of fog spiral up from her mouth. The locals had warned her that the sea was unkind to strangers and that taunting it would be a bad idea.

Her mother would say this entire journey was a bad idea. Felicity would say that every good idea was simply a bad idea no one had thought to try yet.

Ever since she had stumbled across that digital file during her routine server and security maintenance at Wayne Enterprises, she had been unable to shake this place from her mind. It was hard to explain; it was more than just a mystery to her – there were images of inscriptions carved in stone that she had never seen before in her life and yet something told her she knew what they meant.

Her nights had become restless and her waking hours were filled with thoughts of blurry photos and folklore. Nothing about it made sense; and yet here she was, feeling the bite of a frigid ocean during the height of winter.

She told no one, not even her mother, assuming that anyone she told might look at the 22 year old with a sort of raised brow and titled head that said, quite bluntly, that she was stark raving mad. Maybe she was.

After all, she was standing on the shoreline of an ocean that had to be near freezing in the middle of the night with a full moon set high in the cloudless sky reflecting a path of hazy light across its eerily stillness.

So maybe she was mad.  
Maybe she had spent too much time with her head buried in a book.  
Or too much time as a child imaging that there had to be more to every story, including that of her own.

 _Her own story._  
She took a sharp breath in as the thoughts of her childhood drove her wading further into the dark Aegean depths. The water lapped at her waist and her toes were almost numb, barely able to grip at the sea floor. She clutched the pendant that hung around her neck; a simple trinket – a blue gemstone shaped like an icicle, wound with simple silver coil that wrapped through the centre and at the base, where it hung from a silver chain-loop necklace.

It was all she had of him.  
Her father.  
A man she had very few real memories, all faint and clouded by time, and a childhood full of imagined ones. Her mother never spoke of him but to say that he had left them, and while Felicity had always craved to know more about him, the anguish on her mother’s face at the mere mention of him had always pushed Felicity’s quest for answers deeper down, until she couldn’t bring herself to ask the questions.

That was why, a week ago, she lied to her mother telling her that she was destined for a long-deserved holiday in the Bahamas with a few girlfriends from work, and that she would be gone for three weeks.

The deception had gone even further when she scoured the internet for vague enough pictures of holidaying, bikini clad girls that _might_ just pass for her and set her email account up to send a couple of preprogramed ‘update’ emails to ensure Donna Smoak remained in her oblivious bubble.

It was far more elaborate than tying a pillowcase onto a broom handle, but the concept was the same – she had, in essence, run away from home, following some inexplicable feeling that beneath this ocean lay the truth.

And she was going to find it.

Her breath looked like a smokestack in the sky as her trembled exhales dissipated into the frigid air around her. Despite her wetsuit she shivered as the water reached her chest. She wasn’t sure really what she had intended to do from this point so she did the only thing she could think to do; she took another step.

It felt as though the ground gave way beneath her and, still clutching the pendant that hung around her neck, Felicity felt the icy water envelope her as she clawed fruitlessly at it. She tried to scream but her voice was frozen in her throat and nothing more than a gasp escaped before her mouth filled with water.

She was moving much faster than someone who was sinking, and her head was a flurry of confusion as three years of swimming lessons and a ‘natural ability’ had found Felicity a confident swimmer. But no matter how she struggled, or how her svelte but strong arms fought to pull herself to the surface, she sunk deeper until she didn’t know which way was up.

Just before the final specs of hazy light vanished, Felicity turned and saw a blur moving in the water ahead of her as though it was dragging her. And with her last conscious thought, she thought about her mother and what she might do when the emails stopped in two weeks’ time.

And then, with one last instinctive and fleeting moment of fight or flight, she kicked out and felt something warm against her ankle. Her lungs began to collapse and her chest tightened like a heavy weight had been dropped onto it. Consciously she fought the relentless urge to scream, knowing exactly what that would do, until she couldn’t a moment longer.

She opened her mouth and her lungs filled with water like a deluge.  
And then darkness, as though no light had ever existed in that place.  
Pure, unending, blackness.

Then a light.  
Blinding and sharp.

_So this was what death felt like…_

**-|-**

Her head felt heavy and her eyelids felt like 10lb weights against her skull. Her mouth was dry and salty and her limbs felt weak an unresponsive. The air around her was still and fragrant, as though scented with the softest touch of lavender. It felt neither warm nor cold against her cheeks and when she breathed it in deeply it neither chilled nor scolded her lungs. Finally, her fingers moved at her side, but where she expected to touch a damp wetsuit at her thigh, her fingers instead grazed over a soft fabric, that slipped like silk chiffon through her fingertips.

Her eyes startled open, as though an invisible force had finally relinquished control over them, while the rest of her body kept almost perfectly still (but for the tiny movements of the fingers on her right hand) in a cocoon of hidden webs; at least that was how it felt.

As she looked left to right and her dreamy mind started to defog, Felicity could conclude a few things; firstly, she was on a bed with tall, carved posts at each corner. They weren’t wooden, at least she didn’t think so, their smooth alabaster colouring looked like marble to her untrained eye.

The second thing was that she was in a room that was most certainly not hers. The walls were covered in powder blue wallpaper that was faintly embossed with a mural of something that looked ripped from the pages of a Grecian history book. Chariots ridden by Titan-esque figures through streets laden with picks flowers told of glorious valance and celebration on the one side of the room while on the other ethereal women dressed in white gowns that floated around them like veils, their necks and wrists adorned in lavish gold jewellery as they lay about on chaises enjoying food and drink with wanton abandonment told a story of opulence and glamour, wealth and prestige.

Both murals curved around the corners of the wall at the far end of the room, straight ahead of the bed, and melded into another work of art. Set between the bedroom’s two ivory doors was a painting of a throne, carved out of whitewashed stone, with tall spindles that reached above it like a five-pronged trident.

As her head cleared, she heard footsteps approach, at least two, and heavy-footed. Loud voices soon followed.  
“She cannot be allowed to stay,” the one said, his voice was rasped but not deep. He was angry and his tone never attempted to hide that.  
“But she had the necklace,” another voice interjected, that one was softer, curious. Still a man but older perhaps, like time had made his voice much softer than the first.  
The necklace.  
Her eyes shot down to her chest, but she found it without adornment, her father’s necklace was gone.

“She must have stolen it,” the first man bickered, his tone still fraught with much bitterness, “There is no other way she could _rightfully_ have it.”  
She screwed up her face indignantly, it was hers to have. It was all she had of a man she never really knew and to have a stranger say she had no right to it made her blood boil in her veins.  
“We don’t know that Orm, it could be-“  
A loud, echoed bang of something hitting the floor stopped the softer man mid-sentence and the air fell deathly silent.  
“It will be my decision,” a third voice, deep and gravelled. It boomed but his voice wasn’t raised.  
“With all due respect, you are not king yet,” the first, slithery voice snipped.  
“And neither are you.”

One of the doors ahead of her shook and she soon realised someone was on the other side of it. She tried to slow her breathing as she carefully closed her eyes, returning – she hoped – to the same sleeping statue she had been before.

She heard the footsteps, heavy at first, and the sound of the door closing behind whoever entered her room. The footsteps grew lighter as they drew closer and Felicity bit the inside of her lip to stop it from giving her away.

But it wouldn’t have mattered how still she stayed, he already knew she was awake.

He could feel her quickened heartbeat racing beneath her chest as though it was his own. He turned his large hands palms up, and followed the lines of his wrist with his eyes. This had never happened before and he had no way of explaining it, but from the moment she was brought barely clinging to life before him, he had known there was something different about her – he could _feel_ her life force as though it were his own.

“You’re awake,” he whispered, but his voice sounded much louder than he wished it to.  
Felicity let one eye drift open and then the other, blinking until he became clearer.

He was tall, far taller than her, even though the angle he stood at didn’t allow her to see just how _much_ taller than her he actually was. His shoulders were massive and packed tightly beneath into armour of dark green and gold that had somewhat bronzed over time. It looked cold to the touch and stiff, and yet it moved with him as if it was moulded exactly to his body. Layers built up at the shoulders like waves cascading down towards his arm and the markings cut into the armour resembled braided fish scales. It was neither steel nor iron, but it didn’t move like leather either. It was something else, a fabric or casing that somehow took on the properties of all three.

His hair was long and twisted into fine waves that fell over his shoulders and spilled down to his shoulder blades. It was brown by nature, but the ends wore shades of sun-kissed blonde. His eyes were almost a translucent green, though when he moved and the light changed they appeared a watercolour blue. They were so ethereal that it made the black of his pupil glisten and the whites of his eyes shine. They were mesmerizingly holographic and Felicity found herself falling into them like Alice down the Rabbit Hole.

She couldn’t tell if he was smiling as a thick beard of hair shadowed his upper lip and completely swallowed his chin. Despite the thick hair that grew along his jawline and spread up towards his sculptured cheekbones, she could tell his jaw was angled and sharp as though it was cut from the same marble she saw around the room.

His skin was much darker than hers, a deep glow of a tan warmed his face and she wondered, for far too many moments, if the rest of him was that honeyed-bronze in the places she couldn’t see.

But beyond all that, it was something much smaller that took her attention, a scar above his left eye. Her fingers ached to touch it, to find out whether it was smooth or puckered beneath her tip. She wanted to know if it still caused him pain and how it came to be. She wanted to know if he wore it with pride or whether it came to him in shame. She wanted to know everything about it for reasons she couldn’t explain.

At least until she realised her predicament had not changed any and the invisible weight that held her down had not lessened, she was still very much unable to move.  
“Why can’t I move?” she asked, her voice was thin, broken and almost foreign to her.  
“You were barely breathing when they found you,” he stepped closer and she felt her body tremble, although she didn’t know why. “You could have died.”  
“Why can’t I move?” she repeated, coughing out the last few words as her voice plateaued.  
“What are you doing here?” His eyes interrogated her but she felt no anger coming from them and despite her every inclination to be afraid – after all, she wasn’t able to move, she didn’t know where she was and she certainly had no idea who the large mass of a man beside her was – she felt oddly calm like every fibre in her body just _knew_ she was in no danger.

When she offered him no response, he stepped closer and she finally got a true sense of just how large he was as her mind tumbled through a thesaurus worth of synonyms; _bulky, brawny, huge, massive_. She was fairly certain she could hide behind him and completely disappear from sight.

“I don’t even know where here is?” she answered with a strained and exhausted sigh. Her throat hurt and the words scraped at the rawness that burned there. “Why can’t I move? Please.” She screwed her eyes closed as a single tear formed in the corner and slowly slid down her cheek.

He exhaled and his stiff shoulders crumpled inwards at the sight of the single tear carving a path down her blushed cheek.  
“Your body needs time to adjust,” he spoke kindly, his voice softened to one so markedly different to the _boom_ that it had been outside the doors. “Things are different down here. Give me your hand.”  
It twitched at her side, but she wasn’t able to raise it so his large hand scooped hers up and completely encased it. His touch was warm, unexpectedly warm, and Felicity’s eyes plucked open at the sensation of it as it warmed her body and melted away the invisible webs that held her there.

“Try and stand up, slowly,” he warned.  
Her feet tremble against the cloudlike bed beneath her and soon she was in control of both them and her legs as they gently moved to the side. The floating chiffon of the angelic dress glided along with her, gaping at her thigh before she instinctively pulled it closed. It felt fluid and silky between the pads of her fingers, and wholly unlike any fabric she had ever felt before. If one could harness the texture of warm milk and sew it into a gown she suspected it would feel something like the dress she was adorned in.

And for a brief moment, despite being Jewish and all that came along with that religious denomination, she wondered if this was indeed heaven as her feet landed flat on the floor with a drenching of silky fabric pooling around them.

She stood up on wobbly legs, but they kept her up well enough and, with one of his broad arms around her waist, Felicity took a step forward and off the platform the bed had been sitting on. She gasped as she soon realised he had another foot of height over her and suddenly the word _enormous_ didn’t quite feel adequate enough for his build.

“Careful,” he urged, his voice whispered as though he hadn’t quite mastered finding a tone somewhere in between a boom and a whisper.  
She took another step but her feet deceived her and she stumbled forward against the hard wall of his chest. He caught her at the waist, his one hand almost enough to touch both her navel and the centre of her spine. Her palms shook against the convex of his pecs before she steadied herself and plucked them off, one at a time.

“Where is here?” she asked as her eyes floated around the room, finally taking in the furnishing that decorated it.  
They looked ancient but well cared for and while Felicity was no historian, she decided they looked Grecian or Roman, and certainly not from the pages of a Pottery Barn catalogue.

Everything looked to be made of the same material as the four posts of the bed – stone or marble, she wasn’t sure, but the sheen on them was luxuriant and the pigment was a decadent ivory.

“Atlantis,” he answered softly, finally finding that balance in his voice.  
She blinked up at him, once, twice, a third time before she fainted, turning limp in his arms.

**-|-**

She came to seconds later and she was in his arms, swaying as he carried her to the bed. Her eyes were inquisitive and wide and there were a flood of questions teetering on the edge of her tongue, but they dissipated with his next words, “You should rest.” It was as though he’d read her mind and knew it was a veritable avalanche of wonderment.

He sounded so kind and with her face that close to his she could see all the details that distinguished it from any she’d seen before; the smooth planes and the carved heights, the warm tones and the slight flecks of dirt. It had a luminescent quality to it and beyond the surface she couldn’t help but feel as though there was something so familiar about it. He was a stranger, she knew that, but she couldn’t shake the intense feeling that he actually _wasn’t_. That she had known him in that life time and perhaps many before.

She could feel his heart thumping, but not because her hand was pressed against his chest, it was something else, something more, something _deeper_. As though they shared the same heartbeat and hers was echoing his.

_Thump, thump._

“Rest.” His voice lulled her eyes closed and her dark lashes splayed across her porcelain cheeks as he gently placed her into the familiar embrace of the bed. She didn’t try to move again, her body thoroughly exhausted despite having barely done a thing.  
“Felicity,” she whispered her own name and he smiled.  
“Rest Felicity.”

 


	2. 《Blue》

The next time Felicity awoke, the room was lit with candles and oil lamps that cast beautiful reflections across the smooth marble surfaces. The air was chillier, but even in the thin gown she wore, she wasn’t cold.

She could make out the back of his form sitting on a carved oak chair in front of a large open window where gauzy curtains floated on a timid breeze. Gone was the armour, replaced instead by a brown collar-less shirt that draped down his arms. His hair hung loose down his back, falling over his shoulder only when his head drooped forward.

There was a platter of food beside the bed untouched; sliced fruit and bread rolls sitting on a finely polished silver tray. Her mouth watered at the sight of it and only then did she realise she hadn’t eaten since… she let her mind drift as she tried to decide the time that had lapsed between her toes touching the frigid water and the moment she was living now – _was it night time again, had an entire day been lost?_

Unlike the last time, Felicity slipped off the bed with ease, but no sound. All the same he sensed her and turned in his chair as she took a cautious step forward. He lifted himself from the chair fluidly. Despite the sheer bulk involved in the movement, his body never seemed cumbersome to him and he moved it with ease towards her, so light on his feet that each step was nearly silent.

“How are you feeling?” he asked, his lips not giving away any emotions, but his eyes unable to hide his genuine concern.  
“Better,” Felicity said softly as her arms hung around her narrow waist. “How long was I asleep for?” she queried as her fingertips once again felt the delicate fabric of a dress that wasn't hers.  
“A few days,” he admitted as his eyes trailed the slender curves she cut beneath the willowy dress. She sputtered out a cough of disbelief as she considered the ramifications. “Time moves differently beneath the waves,” he explained as his finger gently scooped under her chin. “A few days below is just a mere handful of hours above, a week here is but a day there.”  
The next question sprung haphazardly from her mouth, “How old are you?”  
He smiled, warm and inviting, perhaps a little amused by her question though she couldn’t understand why. “Age isn't worth the same down here. While time moves faster in some respects, it doesn't move at all in many others. We have seen empires rise and fall and we have lived through wars and seen the fleeting moments of peace. We are centuries old, but hidden from the ravages of time.”  
She listened intently and took a few moments of silence to let his words sink in. “Are you immortal?”  
“No,” he shook his head as a man who had seen death, sombre and pained, “but I will live many lifetimes in your world.”  
“What do they call you?” she queried as a tentative finger moved towards him, drawn to the slopes of his exposed chest where his shirt draped open just enough to see the centre of his breastbone and the tattoo marked the bottom of his throat, before she pulled it back and snagged her bottom lip between her teeth to repress the urge to do it again.  
“I have many names,” he replied as he gripped his one hand around the leather brace on his wrist, “but you can call me Arthur.”  
His demeanour never gave him away but, just like Felicity, he was fighting an urge to touch her again. When she had collapsed in his arms his fingertips, coarse and rough, had grazed her silky thigh as he’d lifted her, and the crack of thunder that jolted down his spine was nothing like he'd ever experienced before. It was something he'd found himself instantly addicted to and desperate to feel again.

“Arthur,” she repeated, his name bleeding from her mouth like a sigh that made her lips turn up at one end to make a lopsided smile. "The Aqua man?" Her brow lifted with the question tempting him to answer it with a short nod.  
“I've heard this one.” He smiled, an act which completely softened his face.  
She watched his fingers dance around a cuff bracelet he wore over the fastened brace. “The King of Atlantis?” she posed.  
His smile dropped a fraction as he followed her eyes to the painting of the throne between the towering doors. “Not yet,” he breathed, watching her curious eyes sparkle with each new question that sprung to mind.

“How am I able to breathe down here?” she continued as her fingers trickled down her throat and he followed them with rapt attention until they fell away at the peak of her breastbone.  
“Atlantis is surrounded by a dome. The atmosphere inside it is almost the same as the land you come from.”  
_The land you come from..._ his words made her heart _thud_ loudly against her chest at the sudden realisation this wasn't simply a new country or a distant vacation spot. She was standing in a grand palace in the centre of a city that was supposed to be folklore and fairy tales; something from the realms of wonderful imaginations. Not this. Not real. She shook on her feet and he moved quickly to brace her at the waist.

“And outside the dome?” she asked as she laid her hands on top of his at her waist.  
The warmth from her palms bled into his hands and her touch was like silk. He swallowed heavily before he answered her question. “Some can breathe beyond the dome.”  
Her nose crinkled as the wheels of her head continued to spin with new questions. “Who?”  
When he was satisfied she was stable he slid his hands from her waist and crossed them over his chest, his shoulders bulging under his loose fitting cotton shirt. “You ask a lot of questions,” he chuckled, amused at the way the crinkle across her nose deepened with his words.  
“It's not every day you discover myths are real.”  
She walked on her tiptoes towards the window she had first seen him at and looked out to the city below that twinkled with glowing lights. She wasn’t sure what she had expected, but seeing the sprawling _world_ ahead of her she didn’t question its existence a moment longer.

She heard his faint footsteps shadowing hers and a hot shiver ran down her spine when his warm breath gave away just how close he was standing.  
“I must ask you, how do you have this?” he queried as Felicity turned to face him. He had her small pendant in his hand, and it was only at that moment that she realised he wore a similar one bound with leather around his own neck, but fell down behind his shirt. It was larger and shaped into a bevelled rectangle, but the colour was almost identical.  
“It was given to me by my father,” she answered, remembering with a furrowed brow the ignorance of the man who had suggested she had stolen it.  
It looked so infinitesimal in his large hand and he didn’t stop her she when plucked it from his palm. “Where did he get it?” Arthur asked as his hand floated slowly back down to his side.  
“I don’t know,” she looked down and traced the edges of pendent. “He left when I was young,” she looked up and her eyes caught his, “I don’t even know his name.”

Her answer hang heavy in the air until she folded her slender fingers around the necklace and brought her hand to her chest. “Did it bring me here?”  
He nodded softly. “When water touches it with the light of a full moon above it, it calls out for passage to Atlantis. Explorers of old times used them. But no one has used one in many years, and it was thought most were lost.”

Felicity walked, light-footed, closer to the window. Reaching it, she feathered her fingers through the gauze curtain and let it slip like liquid through them.  
“Will you show me this Atlantis?” she asked quietly as her eyes drunk in the many towers and buildings that speckled the seafloor below them.  
He stood behind her, his chest grazing her back as he leaned over and whispered near her ear, “Close your eyes.”  
She did without question, letting the darkness steal her view as she breathed in the many aromas that filled the air. Decadent vanilla burning from the nearby candles, the slight smell of burnt wick, a subtle fragrance of kelp and the deep, heady scent of his musk.  
“Let it wash over you,” he continued to speak in a hushed tone that parted her lips with a silent moan. “What do you feel?”  
Lights danced on her eyelids as smells teased her senses and something else, unseen, embraced her shoulders.  
“Home.” She spoke first thing that found tenement in her head before her eyes sprung open, surprised at the word she’d said. “How is that possible?” she fretted as she turned back to face him, their bodies now so close they couldn’t help but touch; his hand to her waist, her palm to his chest.  
“I don’t know,” he answered truthfully.  
He didn’t.

  
**-|-**

Tula, a young Atlantean maiden who had been sent to wait on Felicity, carefully brushed long strokes through Felicity’s blonde hair as she smiled at the reflection cast in the mirror ahead of them. It had been four days since Felicity learned of Atlantis’ existence; a total of seven spent within its domed walls. Arthur had visited her each night and during the day when he could, but without uttering the actual words, Felicity knew, for now, she was a prisoner behind these doors.

He carried the weight of that truth heavy across his shoulders, but many people feared the world she came from and if they were to learn a human had found their way inside, panic would set it. She had listened and understood, but her heart ached to explore the realm and a deep need in her belly yearned to touch her feet into its soil for reasons that logic had abandoned – _it felt like home_.

She had spent much of her youth in Las Vegas and from there Boston, Starling, Central City and Gotham; nowhere had ever really felt like home, not like this.

“I can do this you know,” Felicity smiled as she touched a finger to her hair.  
“I don’t mind,” the beautiful young girl replied as she placed the porcelain-handled brush on the dresser. “Will you tell me more stories about the world above?” she asked gingerly as she perched herself on a stool a few feet away.  
The girl would have, at least above land, been about 18, certainly no older than 22, but age was not a concept they really understood down here and Felicity got the impression that, while young, Tula had lived much longer than Felicity might have guessed.

“Arthur will put tape over my mouth if I continue to bore you with stories of above,” Felicity chuckled.  
The young woman’s eyes sparkled gleefully, “You calling him that will never not amuse me,” she said as her nimble fingers idly braided her own hair.  
“Should I not?” Felicity said, rebuking herself for not following a protocol she wasn’t aware of.  
“He offered you his name didn’t he?” the cute redhead beamed. Felicity nodded. “Then that’s what you will call him.” She reached out a hand and tapped the cusp of Felicity’s knee. “For the rest of us, he is the Prince.”

Felicity opened her mouth to respond when something else caught her eye. She wasn’t sure why she hadn’t noticed it before, perhaps Tula had worn something over it, or perhaps Felicity just hadn’t caught her skin in the right light before, but there was a distinctive shimmering blue design along the inside of the maiden’s forearm, almost like a tattoo, but as she moved it reflected the light like tiny fish scales and in certain moments it almost completely vanished. It was faint, but the lines were crisp and the design resembled strokes from a fountain pen. Two separate designs, both about a inch in size.  
“Your tattoo, it’s beautiful,” Felicity breathed as a tentative finger reached towards her.  
Tula moved her arm forward so Felicity could see them. “It’s a soul mark,” she answered as her finger walked whimsically around the edges. “They’re runes, each stands for a letter. When you’re heart falls in love with your destiny, their initials appear. I met mine a few months ago,” she continued with a smile that lit up her entire face.  
“May I touch it?” Felicity asked, watching it as the light refracted and reflected. Tula nodded and Felicity marvelled at how smooth and silky it felt. “Does it hurt?”  
“At first,” Tula admitted, “but not anymore. For everyone it’s different though, some find pleasure in it, others it feel like torture and for a few of us the simply wake up with it.”  
“And what if you never find that person? If you never get that mark.”  
The young woman’s smile grew wider, “The fates will see that all do.”

There was a rapt on the door and Tula sprung from the bed in a hurry to answer it. Pulling the large door open, Arthur stood on the other side of it, dressed in a billowing faintest-tan shirt and dark, nearly black, trousers that clung like leather to his muscular legs.

“May I have a moment,” he asked softly as he looked through Tula to Felicity who was making her way to the door.  
“I’ll see myself out,” the willowy redhead mumbled to herself as her mouth curved into a smile while she left the room and closed the door with an echoing _thud_.  
“You’re early,” Felicity remarked as she took a few measured steps closer. While there wasn’t a single timepiece in her room, she had somehow developed a fragile sense of time and it felt much earlier in the day than she had become accustomed to seeing him.  
“I thought we could take a walk,” he tipped his head down as he spoke and his hair tumbled forward over his shoulder like a waterfall.  
“To this corner or that one,” Felicity teased as she pointed to two corners of her room.  
His lips formed a smile beneath his beard and he laughed huskily. “Outside,” he clarified.  
Her eyebrows sprung up in surprise. “Don’t tease me,” she pleaded as her stomach tightened and somersaulted at the very idea of it.  
“I wouldn’t dream of it.” He took her hand in his and she finally noticed a cloak that had been draped over his arm. “Will you wear this though?” He offered her the heavy green cloak and she eagerly threw it around her shoulders and pulled the clasp tight around her neck. It fell completely forward and swamped her body as she found the small slits for her hands. Carefully Arthur lifted the hood and draped it over her head before he tucked a spill of blonde hair into its shadows.

He couldn’t help but be saddened that such a heavy cloak hid so much of her beautiful face, but he had kept her up here far too long and as much as Felicity _wanted_ to see Atlantis, he desperately wanted to show it to her; and this was the only way.

**-|-**

They took empty passageways and secret tunnels through the palace until they were standing on the edge of the dome. Felicity dug her feet into the soil and felt its coolness between her toes as she breathed in the crisp air. It reminded her of an aquarium only both sides of the glass held something intoxicatingly beautiful.

Around her vegetation grew in vibrant colours, like an enchanted forest, only the flowers were ones she’d never seen before and there was an eerily silence in the tops of the trees where one might expect birdlife. He told her the story of Atlantis and it was much like the one told to children and theorised in stories; it had been a large, vast islands separated by moats and linked by a canal that ran through it. It was founded by half gods and half humans, home to scholars and scientists, to priests and royalty. It thrived among the other nations of the known world, smiled upon by the gods. A utopian dream. But it grew arrogant and sought its own place among the deities.

The gods grew wrathful and Poseidon sunk the island and its inhabitants were saved by Persephone after she cast a dome over it.  
“We live as a reminder of what arrogance brings and as guardians to the treasures of Atlantis and protectors of the sea,” Arthur continued as he watched her drink in the many sights and listen to his story with intrigue.  
“And you will one day be King of it?” she asked as she sat on smooth rock to touch her fingers to the mossy floor.  
“Gods willing,” he answered succinctly.

Her eyes gazed into the crumbling ruins beyond the dome, squinting to make out their hallow forms in the murky waters. “What is that?” she asked, feeling a pang of distress in her heart as though voices rose from the deep to call her to them.  
“Ruins of the parts the dome never covered,” he answered solemnly, most were off limits to even those who could pass between the City and the Ocean ahead.  
Felicity stood up and moved as close to the sphere as she could, even touching her fingers to the smooth wall of it. “I wish I could see it.”

“Do you trust me?” he asked.  
She turned towards him and nodded, “Yes.”  
After looking around to ensure they were alone, Arthur unclasped her cloak and it fell like a heavy curtain around her feet. He toed off his sandals and lifted his shirt from his body.

Felicity felt her eyes widen, but she struggled to keep in control of her mouth, somehow managing to keep that from gaping, as she took _him_ in. She was certain there were words that hadn’t been invented yet to describe just how immeasurably _large_ his chest was; and while she fancied herself somewhat of a crossword aficionado, she couldn’t formulate any words other than _fuck_ in her head.

His neck was thick but not in a way where he looked like a tortoise, and she assumed that to be because his jaw was regally sharp and defined and his shoulders were proportionately large to counter the sinewy mass. The rounds of his shoulders were like mountains her hands itched at her sides to climb and her mouth hungered to claim. They were tattooed in artwork that matched the suit he’d worn previously, sculpted like scales down his bugling arms before cutting away at the elbow and starting against as braces that covered his corded forearms with his ropes of tendons and veins twisting at his wrists.

The tattoos also weaved down half of his pecs, drawing Felicity’s eye to the tight buds of his wine-coloured nipples. The convex of his pecs looked firm and taut and she knew just by looking at them that even with her fingers spread as wide as she could make them, her hands would never be able to contain one. The same tribal like markings wrapped around his ribcage and plummeted beneath the waist band of his pants, making Felicity salivate as she wondered whether they carried on down to his manhood.

Feeling her breathing quickening, Felicity bit the inside of her lip until the pain of it jarred her eyes away from his hulking physique and when he turned a little to the side she supressed another moan as his back had its own canvas of brawn and rounded muscles, decorated in ink.

“Hold your breath,” he instructed as he threaded her fingers into his. She took a deep breath in and held it tightly behind pinched lips.  
Walking through the dome felt no different to walking through a gentle breeze. Felicity wasn’t sure what she had expected but only moments ago she had put her hand against it and it had been as pliable as stone, but now, holding his hand, they were able to pass through it like it was nothing more than a puff of silky-white smoke.

It took a second before she realised she was now completely submerged and for a moment her instincts were to pull away and fall back into the safety of the dome, or perhaps to struggle for the surface even though she knew they must be so deep that there wasn’t a chance she would find it, but he squeezed her hand and her eyes ran to his; they were soft and smiling, calming her instantly.  
_Do you trust me?_  
She nodded to a question that wasn’t really asked and with her hand embedded in his, Arthur took off through the water like he was born swimming – which she supposed he kind of was.

They reached the ruins quickly and he set her down onto a flat rock that overlooked the ancient city. Her toes floated off the rock as her dress moved ethereally around her legs before he drew a circle around them with his trident and a bubble of air encased them. Still holding her breath, Felicity’s feet fell flat onto the smooth stone and a smile turned up Arthur’s mouth, even beneath his woolly beard.  
“You can breathe, it’s perfectly safe,” he announced as he shook the water from his strapping arms.  
No sooner had the words left his mouth, and Felicity was gasping to fill her lungs with oxygen until she stumbled forward, a little lightheaded.  
“It takes some getting used to,” he chuckled as he caught her against his chest.  
Her cheek shivered at the cool water drops that bled from the beef-caps of his chest and into her ruddy skin as her fingers traipsed down his ribs, skating over the muscles that quivered there.  
“What is this?” she asked quietly as her breathing finally settled into some normality.  
“An air pocket,” he answered with a sarcastic grin.  
She smacked his arm playfully, making water droplets fly off his brawny biceps. “I know what it is, I just wondered if it had a special name,” she retorted with a single brow tugged towards her hairline.  
“We just call it an aquarium for land lovers,” he chuckled out an almost pirate-esque tone.  
“How long will it last?” she asked while she touched a tentative finger on the side of it.  
“As long as I want it to,” he simpered before he leaned in, his beard grazing her shoulder, “just don’t pop it.”

Felicity retracted her finger instantly and shrouded it behind her soaked dress before he roared with laughter at the startled look on her face. “Can I… do that?” she said inquisitively.  
His head shook as he continued to belly-laugh at her scolded reaction. “No, Felicity, it’s perfectly safe.”  
“You played a very cruel joke,” she huffed, although a smile creeping up the corner of her lips told of her amusement all the same.  
“I’m sorry,” he offered kindly as his fingers coiled around her wet hair, twisting it gently back until it set like a curl over her shoulder.

Silence fell between them and only the sound of their breathing filled the small space around them until he closed his eyes and his mouth moved like a soft, voice-less prayer. When he opened them, their small bubble was surrounded by schools of beautiful fish, in almost every colour and size, moving angelically through the water like a stage show.

“Are you doing that?” she asked in wonderment as her eyes drunk in the colours and reflections against a backdrop of brightly coloured coral and a veritable forest of sea plants.  
He bent down and picked a strawberry anemone from the sea floor. “Maybe,” he answered as he held the delicate ‘flower’ out to her.

Her lips parted softly as she expelled a breath she didn’t know she was keeping before she plucked the flower from his pinched fingers and studied it between her own.  
“It’s beautiful here,” she whispered as her fingers danced through the ‘petals’.  
His eyes softened as the word ‘beautiful’ floated from her mouth, because what she didn’t seem to realise that for the first time, he was looking at something he truly considered _breathtakingly beautiful_ – Her.

Ever since the moment he’d laid eyes on her he had become overwhelmed with the need to protect her, the desire to follow her footsteps wherever they led and the desperate want to feel her skin against his lips. It was consuming him, every waking moment and every dream he fell into – it was all her.

And as she stood in front of him, her blue eyes dancing with glee at the sights that surrounded them and her dress glued seductively to her stunning, sloping form, he wanted nothing but to kiss her wet lips and feel the cut of her hard nipples against the slope of his chest. He wanted to pull her tight into him and wring the water from the back of her dress as his hand massaged into her full rear.

He wanted her hot moans to fill his lungs and her small frame to writhe underneath him as his tongue explored her body; lips parted, cheeks flush, hot strokes of scarlet dripping down her throat, her nipples hard under his thumb, her belly soft and supple – he wanted every fucking inch of her.

But she’s wasn’t from his world and he wouldn’t make the same mistakes his mother had when she fell for a man who could never follow her into the depths. Felicity lived above; his home was beneath.


	3. 《Home》

_**the runes** _

_**** _

Keeping his thoughts to himself and his hands lumbering by his side as he showed Felicity everything she wanted to see had taken its toll on the Prince of Atlantis and after they had parted ways at her door after supper he’d shut himself in his chambers in an effort to find solace from the voices thumping around in his head.

But rest evaded him and after a pacing around his chamber in the warm amber hue of the lit candles, he found himself trying to put together pieces of a puzzle he had never seen. Her father could have been a thief or traveller that hadn’t known what he’d stumbled across when he found a gateway stone. Keeping her here could start a war between the two realms but letting her leave could put their secret at risk.

He huffed loudly as he stood up and beat his fist into the oak desk, toppling the books lined up there. She had enraptured him.

A small knock on his door stole his attention from the scattered books on the floor as he straightened his embroidered gold and scarlet cloak and made his way to the door. Expecting to find an advisor, his frown was startled from his brow when he opened it to find Felicity standing there, shrouded in the same heavy coat he’d given her earlier that day. Wordlessly he ushered her in and with wet lips the colour of coral and hauntingly-deep blue eyes as wide as saucers, she floated into his room.

Her body tingled as the door made a tantric _click_ when it closed them inside the room, a room very different to hers. The walls were darker, the light a more ambient red and the murals on the wall spoke of fierce battles and triumphant victories. Drapery of red and adornments of gold flooded the room as she walked slowly around it, taking every surface of it in. It was as though her room reflected light, an appeasement to the gods’ joys and prosperity, while his reflected a depth that spoke of their great power and hunger for glory.

His hands reached around her neck to unclasp the heavy cloak that weighted down her shoulders. It fell into his hands and she sighed softly, grateful for the amnesty from its burden. His eyes startled as his jaw dropped when her dress was revealed to him. It was the colour of blood-wine, rich and decadent, deep and sinful and her entire back was naked to his gaze before the silk-chiffon fabric draped around her waist and cascaded like a waterfall down her curvy legs.

Her hips swayed as she turned on the spot and he couldn’t help but gawk as his eyes travelled the exotic cut of the dress as the fabric gaped down the centre of her body, pulling together just before her navel, and the two bands of fabric that draped over her pert breasts were adorned with a solid gold necklace that clasped the fabric around her neck.

“What are you…” the words stumbled, breathless, from his mouth as his breathing grew lumbered and panted.  
“I wanted to see you,” she admitted as her eyes dropped to the slate-stone floor beneath her feet. “I wanted to…” her eyes blinked back up, glassy behind a wall of emotions. She reached her thumb up and swept it from one corner of his bottom lip to the other, relishing the way it moved under her direction.  
“I wanted to…” she repeated, quiet and demure as though she was afraid of her own voice; or the words her heart longed to say. Her nails gently raked the skin under his beard before her hand fell from his face. “I just wanted to…” her lips parted and her eyes softened as her chin tipped up towards him.

Their lips moved closer, so close that when she went to speak again they grazed against each other, but before she could utter any words a sudden jolt of pain racked her body. She cried out in anguish as her arm burned beneath the skin. He caught her before she collapsed to the floor as he cried out for help. Her terrified eyes pleaded for him to do something, to take the pain away, to stop the flames that were attacking her body, but no matter how hard he looked for a reason, he could find none that explain her torture.

He scooped her writhing and trembling body into his arms and carried her briskly to his bed just as the doors to his chambers flung open and the room filled with worried and confused faces.

“It burns,” she screamed, her voice cracked and broken and her eyes screwed shut. She clawed at her arm and her throat, breaking the skin on both before he pulled her arm away and begged her to tell him what was wrong.  
“Please,” she sobbed against his chest as her nails embedded in his shoulder.

**-|-**

Twenty minutes later, with a sedative now coursing through her veins and her body slumped into a deep sleep, Arthur finally stood up from beside the bed and gently lay her arm across her waist. None of the people in the room could offer him any explanation but, at least for that moment, she seemed to be resting peacefully.

“My Prince,” Orm, his half-brother born of his mother and a banished oceanic socerer said, luring him away from the bed side.  
“What is it?” Arthur asked as they walked to a secluded corner of his chambers.  
“She is from the above, she doesn’t belong below. Perhaps the pain is her body telling her that,” he explained, his words whispered behind a sneer he kept hidden, because he knew each word he spoke to be a lie.  
Arthur bit back his anger; not for his half-brother but simply for the helplessness he felt as he looked back at Felicity.  
“You know it to be true, the longer she stays the more intense her agony will be,” Orm continued.

The truth was something quite different and in the many years Orm spent roaming the secluded halls and reading the sacred texts, he knew what Arthur didn’t – and couldn’t be allowed to know. A truth which would reveal itself soon.

**-|-**

  
The night was heavy and the shadows played across Arthur’s weighty brow, furrowed with discontent and anguish as he sat a few feet from Felicity, still at rest in his bed. Most of the candles had burned out and the room was cast in thick silence, disturbed only when his weight shifted in the chair and a soft creak ricocheted around the vast room.

He caught a breath in his throat when she stirred and slowly lifted her head from his pillow. The back of her hand pressed into her eye as she struggled to sit up. “What happened?” she asked, her throat dry and her lips parched.  
He walked towards her and poured a goblet of water that he offered her with a worried smile.

“You’ll leave in the morning,” he spoke softly as he pinned his shoulders back.  
She took a sip of water, letting it slowly slide down her throat like a cool elixir. “You’re angry?” she asked while she tried to read the crease around his eyes and the deep trenches across his forehead.  
“You’ve stayed too long,” he added, sadness drenching his words. It had been a week but to his heart it had felt like only a moment; not nearly long enough. “This is no place for you.”  
Felicity placed the goblet on the tray beside the bed and slipped her feet out from the sheet, anchoring them to the floor before she stood up, a little shaky but well enough. Her fingers trickled through strands of his hair as she studied his sullen expression.  
“Why are you saying these things?” she asked with a shaky voice as she searched her mind for memories that were clouded over from the medicine she had been given to rest.  
He caught her hand and stared down at her forearm, expecting to find scars he was surprised to see nothing discolouring her milky-complexion.  
“You were in pain,” he whispered as he touched the places she had clawed with her own hand.  
“I’m fine now,” she replied, searching his eyes for the fondness she had seen there earlier that day.  
“We angered the gods once before,” he sighed, worry scarring his face. “Your body isn’t made to survive down here, while we breathe air it is not the same as yours.” His hand clasped her wrist and held it, trembling, against his broad chest. “I grow weak on the surface and you will grow weak below it.”  
She watched him flinch as he swallowed, as though each word and what they meant hurt him. “You will leave in the morning,” he added, woefully dropping her hand from his.

He turned away and took a few steps to put some distance between them, but Felicity was relentless and followed him before she caught his arm at the crook of his elbow and spun him around. “Is that what you want?” she asked, her voice cracked and husky.  
“It’s what must happen,” he rebuked, letting her go was not what he wanted and doing so could jeopardise the very existence of Atlantis, but keeping her here to die or any alternative was something he couldn’t entertain for even a moment.  
“That’s not what I asked,” she argued as he stepped away, unsure of his resolve and unable to predict his own wanton feelings.  
“Goddammit Felicity, I am trying to keep you safe,” his voice boomed, even though he never meant it to and his apology was instant, “I’m sorry, please,” he offered, regret threading through his eyes as his chin sunk to his chest. “I’m trying to keep you safe,” he repeated, softer and quivered as he started to back away. “You may rest here the night,” he continued as he walked heavy-footed towards the door.  
“Wait,” she called out as her hand reached out. He turned near the door, his eyes weary and his resolve tiring as she walked a few steps towards him. “Stay with me tonight,” she said before she bit her lip inwards and breathed out a shaky sigh. She watched him swallow a lump, long and slow as his head turned over her proposal and _everything_ unsaid that came with it.

She rested her hand on his chest as her eyes looked up at him, her head tipped a little towards her shoulder, “You’ve felt it too haven’t you?” she whispered, “this thumping urge.” Her fingers tapped above his heart, mimicking the thump of it almost perfectly.  
“Yes,” he breathed, the word like gravel in his throat.  
Her fingers continued to tap his chest as the heel of her palm pressed deeper into his flesh. “An unbearable heat.” Whispered. Enchanting.  
His head nodded of its own volition as a shaky “Yes,” left his lips.  
Her hand lifted off his chest before a finger landed at the base of his throat. “Can you taste me every breath you take?” she asked, describing the feelings that had taken her a little more each day.  
His eyes said yes as his lips mouthed the word.  
His hair brushed the back of her knuckles as she danced her fingers up towards his temples. It was as though she could feel his every emotion; fear, anger, confusion, _lust_. “Can you smell me on your brain?”  
He leaned in and inhaled the scent of her hair, deep and primal. “Yes,” he rasped, the word sending a shiver down her spine.

“Then kiss me,” she demanded with wild eyes and tremoring lips.  
He didn’t answer in words but his large hand cupped an entire half of her face and before she could take a moment to feel the heat beating from his palm, his lips were on hers. Rash, deep and frantic as though the moment would only last a few fleeting seconds and then disappear forever once their senses returned to them. But as the seconds slowed and neither pulled away his kiss softened and her palm slid over his chest, knotting in the cotton shirt he wore.

Her body swayed on the balls of her feet until his massive hand steadied her at the small of her back and pressed her warm body against his. His tongue swept across her lip until she parted them for him. A moment later her mouth filled with his curious tongue as it discovered every part of her warm, wet cave. She moaned into his mouth while her hips bucked into his legs and her belly skimmed the sensitive tip of his engorged cock as it hung free in his trousers. The sensation was like electricity coursing through his veins and on instinct he lifted her easily into the air.

Their mouths broke apart, breathless, as he took a slow step towards the bed of crumpled satin sheets. Her eyes searched his as he looked for reservation in hers.  
“I want this,” she soothed the lines across his brow with a smatter of feathery kisses. “I want you, tonight.” She lifted off the seat his arm had made under her rear and bucked her body against his chest, feeling the heat of his body against her thighs before she gasped at the pleasure that prickled her skin.

He laid her carefully onto the bed, smiling as her hair sprawled out across the satiny linen. She sat up on her elbows just as he dropped to his knees alongside the bed. Her hand brushed aside his long hair as she lifted his gaze to her. Worry fraught his expression despite her words.  
“I don't know if I can be gentle,” he admitted on a rasped breath as he looked across her petite frame and felt the surge of desire burning inside him. He was so much larger than her.

She reached around the back of her dress and found the clasp of the necklace that held her dress up. After releasing it the draped fabric drifted down the slopes of her chests exposing her milky shoulders and her creamy breasts, topped with rosy nipples. She took his one hand into both of hers and raised it to her breast. His hand completely swallowed it, and her nipple peaked beneath its warmth before his fingers spread to her ribs and his thumb gently skimmed over the pebbled blush-pink bud.  
“I never asked you to be gentle,” she said with a coquettish smile.

Her fingers tore at the hem of his shirt, guiding it easily off his body as his hand gently massaged her supple breast and her fingertips scurried across the sinewy slopes of his chest, twisting over the mounds and slipping between the ridges, now slick with a light mist of sweat. Their mouths crashed together again in a fit of tongues and teeth and wanton breaths, unable to fight off their feelings of longing a moment longer.

He stood up and her eyes drifted to the form in his pants. Long, hard and fighting the seam of linen. She took it all in, subconsciously swallowing down a gasp as her fingers reached tentatively towards it. His eyes lulled up towards the ceiling when her index finger skimmed down its impressive length and she felt a sudden surge of power at how her touch made his chest shiver and his mouth gape. She moved a little closer, until she was perched on the edge of the bed and gently folded her fingers under his waistband. He caught her hands as she inched the fabric over the deep v of his pelvis, but a smile from her lips said all he needed to hear and his hand dropped away. Felicity shuffled his pants down his body until his cock sprung free. It was massive and she found herself staring at it with both awe and wonderment. The tattoos, _sadly_ , stopped at the cusp of his pelvis.

She kissed slowly down the sharp v cut into the side of his body, with her tongue languishing in the deep ‘Adonis Belt’ trench all the way to his pelvis. His hands fisted in her hair as her feather-light kisses dropped closer to the scorching head of his throbbing erection. Her nails raked up the inside of his thigh, scouring the skin and relishing the way his sinewy trunks trembled at her touch. Her lips lifted off his skin just as her nose nicked his base and he shuddered with a rumbled growl from the deep recesses of his gut. She blew softly through the thatch of hair as her palm cupped the underneath of his cock which pumped with almost every ounce of blood he had.

With one hand at his base, she slid the other down his engorged length and sliced her thumb over his glossy slit. She smiled as she looked down at the thin coat of pre cum that glistened on her skin. That was for her, just like the soaking at the tops of her thighs was for him. Her tongue peeked out from behind her lips and as she gently pumped his erection with her one lissom hand while she licked his salty juice from the thumb of her other.

His knees buckled at the sight of it and before he had a moment to compose himself she had taken his tip into her mouth. Hollowing her cheeks she swirled her tongue around the rim, flicking it playfully through the slit before she guided him deeper. It took Arthur every restraint he possessed to let her feed him in slowly, even though the bite at the back of his thighs was desperate to plunge himself forward and sink himself deep into her mouth. She smiled, as though she could read the salacious thoughts that rumbled behind his eyes as she braced his head against the smooth, soft palate at the back of her mouth.

She could taste him on her tongue and she could feel the prick of his saltiness at the back of her throat as she began to move up and down his pulsing shaft while her hand pleasured the excess of his length at the base with quick, sharp tugs.

He was verging on delirious and his eyes could only see in drizzles of hazy light as his breath became short and erratic. He forced his eyes open with an urgent need to study her below him, taking him in and out; her wide eyes looking up his chest and her tiny hand around the base of his cock, fingers not quite meeting.

His jaw tensed and his molars ground against each other as a low rumble thundered in his belly and tightened across his core with the power of a hundred sit-ups. His hand clasped in her hair, coiling into the roots and making her let out a mewl that reverberated down his shaft as the need to come almost completely engulfed him.

He pulled away and the pop her lips made as they dropped off the end of his cock made his mouth water and his body groan in sinful indignation, but he needed to slow this down.

She looked up at him with ruffled and piqued eyes, but before she could question him, he’d bent almost in half and caught her lips with his own. His tongue swam over her lips, tasting the remnants of his salty flavour. They fell back, entangled in each other, onto the bed as they discovered and explored the realms of each other’s mouths with wanton abandonment.

His hands traced her figure, running up the slender curve of her waist before he cupped his palm to her breast and gently squeezed. Her mouth gasped against his and she nipped at his lower lip before their lips parted.

He towered above her, shadowing her body beneath his as he studied each intricate curve of her. Her fingertips touched the slopes of his chest and she smiled as she stretched her hand across one pec, utterly unable to cover it, just as she’d hypothesized. He seemed mesmerised by her; from her supple skin to her luminescent eyes, the way her breasts moved with each breath she took to her flawless porcelain skin that was warmed by the glow from the nearby lights.

She wasn’t sure what she had expected, but tracing the sweeping lines of his tattoo it felt like silk under the pad of her finger. Her hand fell away as his body closed in on hers and his mouth dropped to her neck. His lips stayed perfectly still in the crook of it, with just his warm breath melting into her skin. He was memorising every scent that radiated off her body, desperate to remember them when she was gone.

Finally his lips met with her tempered skin and even though his kiss was no heavier than a feather brush, to Felicity it felt like it embedded in her skin. She would never allow herself to forget it.

He dragged slow and lingered kisses down her chest, listening to her heart thumping behind her chest as he veered from her clavicle to her aching breast. His mouth closed over her breast, taking in a mouthful while his chin bristled the crescent underneath. His tongue moved in slow, considered circles around her nipple, tightening it with each loop until it was puckered and wound into a knot. She moaned breathlessly as her shoulders levitated off the bed. Braced on one hand, Arthur gently lifted his other one off the bed and cupped her second breast. With the rhythm of a gentle wave he massaged his vast palm into her supple mound while his fingers stroked her lithe collarbone where the bone jutted out, taut under her skin, with each gasped breath she took.

Her legs parted around him as her keened hums drew him ever closer. His name fell like a drip of warmed honey from her sweet lips when she felt his ample cock brush against her silken thigh. “Plee-ase,” she whispered, dragging the word out like an incantation as her breath caught in her throat and her desires became more desperate.

But his body stayed as he was, his tongue dancing delectably over and around her nipple while his hand cavorted with her pliant breast until she thrust her hips up towards him and pushed his cock against her clothed folds. He reactively growled into her nipple sending a reverberation down to her core as she hummed his name again and again behind closed lips.

His hand dropped from her breast just as his mouth popped off the other one. He blew against her moist skin, making her body writhe in pleasure underneath him while he watched the hedonism blanket her expression. After swapping the hands he braced himself up on, Arthur traced the line of Felicity’s swollen lip before he gently slipped his thumb inside her mouth where her tongue lathed and her cheeks hollowed to seduce him deeper.

With his thumb wet from her mouth he dragged it slowly down her swanned neck, following the lines of scarlet that coloured her throat, and across to her heaving breast. She whimpered as his thumb teased her nipple while she rolled her chest, begging him to go further down her aching body.

“Tell me what you want,” he said before his lips formed an O and he blew gently over her tender breast making her eyes flutter to the ceiling.  
Her hand found his and their fingers danced, tip to tip. “I want to be yours tonight, and I want you to be mine.”  
His hand moved from her breast to her face, cupping it carefully as he leaned down and scooped her lips onto his. “I want to be yours,” he whispered against her pillowed lips while their noses nuzzled together. He kissed her again, softer than the last. “I want to be with you.”

She took his hand and carefully trailed it down her body and over the thin dress still clinched at her waist until his fingers skimmed her embering sex. Her eyes fixated on his as their faces sat barely inches apart. “Then be with me.”

He spread her legs wide and twisted one of his husky legs around her slender one, anchoring it against him before his thick digits swarmed the fragile fabric of her panties. He smiled broadly as he felt her arousal seeping through the gauzy fabric and blanching the pads of his fingers.  
“Do you want this?” he asked, his voice rich and decadent, like velvet.  
She nodded as a blush pinched her cheeks a ruddy peach. “Yes,” she assured him.  
He curtained back her panties and dipped a finger inside her sweltering folds making her moan hungrily. She was warm and wet and silky and he found himself needing to surge forward and bury the length of his finger inside her, _but not yet._

His finger drew deliberately slow figures down her slit and up and around the hood of her clit as she moaned salaciously while amorous shadows darkened her eyes and her teeth scourged crimson spots on her plump lower lip. He skirted her entrance, revelling in the way just dipping the tip of his finger inside her made her body jerk against him.

He could spend days like that, dredging through her silky, soft folds and watching the sensuality darken and illuminate her features. He could listen greedily to the soft mewls and the short pants that filled the room and hung heavy around them and he could feed off her spend and never feel famished. But they didn’t have that sort of time. The realisation hurt his heart, but she belonged _above_. She twisted her torso onto one shoulder as delicate fingers trickled down his face like the first drops of rain. Her eyes were wild and wide and her lips were blossomed as she began to shift her hips, pushing his thick finger quicker between her folds.

He added a second finger and his thumb soon worked tiny circles around her nub, stroking it and patting it against the pad until she sobbed his name into the dip of his shoulder. Her body swallowed the first finger he dipped into her just as an indulgent cry of satisfaction flung from her body, concaving her towards him.

He hummed, delirious, and his eyes fell shut as he savoured the feeling of her cushioned walls sucking his finger deeper inside her until he had no more length to give her. His finger twisted and stroked her and she jolted with currents of pleasure.

He soon added a second finger, opening her up and readying her body for his throbbing and engorged cock. He pumped them deep, building his rhythm up until he was thrusting in time with the blood pulsing through their bodies.

Felicity frantically kissed his shoulder as her eyes squeezed closed and euphoria saw her seeing stars on her eyelids. She could feel the grumble in her belly and the tightening across her core as she nipped and nibbled at his muscles and twisted her fingers into his hair.

She was going to come.  
And she did.

His fingers sliced up into her release, thrusting through it as he continued to stroke her clit while his name chanted from her lips. His other arm slid under her trembling body and he held her tight against his chest before she rolled fully onto her side and clamped his wrist between her thighs.

Her orgasm was the type of one that stole your breath and made you forget your name, but, name aside, Felicity knew she needed something more. She needed him. With a strength that surprised them both, she pushed him down into the mattress and mounted him with the speed and flexibility of a gymnast, until her small frame was perched on top of his mass and she was furiously pumping his engorged cock between her nimble hands.

“Inside you,” he gritted, afraid he was going to come over her hands if she continued jerking him off much longer.  
Breathless and with strands of golden hair glued to her temples, Felicity fed the tip of his cock inside her thrumming walls. The stretch was engrossing and for a few moments Felicity forgot to breathe until his hands circled her waist with a gentle stroke and she glanced down at him.  
“Are you okay?” he asked softly, worry threaded across his brow and his loose smile.  
She slid him a little deeper, expelling air as his cock filled her. Blinking, she nodded, before she added a breathless, “I’ve never felt better.”

She guided one of his hands up her chest where his fingers delicately played with her nipple, while she folded his other hand around her waist and slid his member deeper until he was fully seated inside her pulsing sex. He stayed motionless under her, even as sweat beaded across his brow, to let her settle into the fullness.

Slowly she began to rock, making keening hums as her clit brushed against his pubis. Her speed gathered and his hand moved with her hip while he cupped and pleasured her breasts, one then the other. Her hair spilled down her back and skimmed his knuckles when her head dropped and her eyes clung to the ceiling.

Her breasts bounced in his hand the more speed she gathered as his cock touched places of her that Felicity had never experienced. It was like his cock was sawing through her and she craved every _fucking_ second of it.

The smell of sex permeated the air and Arthur sucked it in through his famished lips while his fingers tugged on the tips of her hair. She fell forward, arching her back and she raked her nails down the taut ripples of his chest. She gripped the hand that held her waist as she looked up his centre at him with wild, ravenous eyes.  
“Fuck me,” she pleaded, tantric and husky, while she clawed his hand.

He knew what she wanted, what she was asking for.  
He flipped her like a rag doll and she landed with a puff of air on her back with his cock still lodged inside her. Giving her only a few moments to catch her breath, Arthur lifted one of her legs into the air and held it in the crook of his bent elbow.

And then he fucked her.  
Like a stallion on heat, his cock pummelled her in rapid and erratic thrusts that found her shifting in the sheets below him. Her entire chest was a watercolour of red and her pert breasts bounced frantically.

He felt the familiar bite at the back of his thighs and the tingle low in his balls when a wicked grin set upon her lips and she clenched him between her walls and arched her back off the skewed sheets.

He had no chance of holding himself in a moment longer, despite his desire to see her finish first, but within seconds of his seed spilling into her in ribbons of thick release, Felicity gushed with her second orgasm of the night, before she laced her fingers around his neck and brought his lips crashing down onto hers.

If there was only that night; they had made it memorable.  
But as their trembling lips kissed and their eyes fell closed, neither of them noticed the flashes of luminous blue under the drenched skin of their forearms. It only lasted a fleeting moment before is vanished just as quickly and silently as it had appeared.

**-|-**

  
They lay in bed, naked and tangled in his sheets, with beads of sweat drying into their skin as their bodies cuddled together fully spent and blissfully content. She was nestled into his side with her fingers lazily tracing the tattoos on his chest and speckling his shoulder with chaste kisses. She listened to him sigh as he lay on his back and his fingers combed through strands of her hair.

“Is it time?” she whispered, her voice shaking at the end as she buried her chin in his chest and looked up at him.  
He looked down his body and tried to smile, but his lips trembled and it soon fell away. “Do you trust me?” he asked sombrely.  
She answered immediately, “Of course.”

He reached his other hand out and took a small wooden box from the bedside table. After placing it carefully on his chest he cracked the lid of it open and inside, on a bed of black velveteen, was a small blue capsule that seemed to emit a soft and enchanting glow.

“You need to take this.” He watched as her tiny fingers plucked the pill from its case. “That way you won’t get hurt when I take you to the surface. It’ll be like you’re in a deep sleep and no harm will come to you.” He offered her another assuring smile.  
“Will I remember you?” she asked faintly as tears pooled behind her eyes.  
He brushed her hair back and shifted so his lips were closer to hers. “Like a dream, but nothing more,” he answered before he kissed her lips, slow and lingered, unwilling to pull apart.

“Will you remember me?” she cried softly while the tip of her nose skimmed against the tip of his.  
His thumb brushed a tear from her cheek before he lifted her fallen chin so their eyes met. “I will never forget you.”  
They kissed again, and again, in a flurry of tiny, desperate kisses before she pushed the pill through her lips, pursed them tightly and kissed him one last time.

The room fell silent as her head sunk to his chest. He said her name softly, but she didn’t respond. With tear-soaked eyes, Arthur leaned forward and kissed her warm forehead before he whispered, “I’ll never forget you Felicity Smoak.”

For a fleeting moment the pain in his heart burned his forearm like the sting of a jellyfish, but he saw nothing that could explain it and so, mindlessly, he pushed the pain aside as he held her just a few moments longer.

Until it was time to leave.

**-|-**

  
It felt like a hangover.  
The dull drone in the back of her head that reverberated out to her temples. The type of morning after where your eyes felt taped shut and your tongue felt dry and far too large for your mouth.

She groaned to an empty room as she draped her arm across her face, silently cursing the bright sun piercing through the flimsy and torn curtains in the small cabin along the shoreline of the tiny fishing village.

As she opened her mouth to curse out loud at the infraction she felt the distinctive taste of salt on her lips and the tartness shook her eyes open. Groggily Felicity lumbered up the bed and sat up against the painted ply wood headboard.

She carefully looked around the room, it was familiar enough and with a few heavy blinks she realised her contacts were missing. She leaned over to the bedside and found her glasses where she remembered putting them, but without any recollection _why_.

Patting her lips together, she gathered and considered what she knew. This wasn’t home, but that was her suitcase beside the low dresser. She remembered touching her toes into the icy water, but her clothes were fresh and dry.

With a few more measured breaths, blurry images appeared on the back of her eyelids; spires, coral, a smile, a touch, words whispered she couldn’t hear, painted scales, pools of bright blue... nothing that stayed with her more than a fleeting moment and nothing she really understood.

Her arms cross over her body and, with a blink, she caught something with her eye. She unravelled her arms and stared down at one, wide-eyed and perplexed.

It was branded.  
But she had no idea what the symbols meant.

She would never have known that the first was an A, the second a C.  
To her they were simply translucent blue strokes of paint she couldn’t rub off her arm.  
She didn’t know.  
How could she have known?  
Arthur Curry was nothing more than a fleeting moment in a run of images.

Just a dream.

_Wasn't it?_

  
**-The End-**

 **Bish is going to kill me**.

 


End file.
